Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Evolution (Biology)
As it is very necessary to keep up a clear distinction between these two
processes, let the one be called _neurosis_, and the other
_psychosis_. When the gamekeeper was first trained to his work every
step in the process of neurosis was accompanied by a corresponding step in
that of psychosis, or nearly so. He was conscious of seeing something,
conscious of making sure it was a hare, conscious of desiring to catch it,
and therefore to loose the greyhound at the right time, conscious of the
acts by which he let the dog out of the leash. But with practice, though
the various steps of the neurosis remain--for otherwise the impression on
the retina would not result in the loosing of the dog--the great majority
of the steps of the psychosis vanish, and the loosing of the dog follows
unconsciously, or as we say, without thinking about it, upon the sight of
the hare. No one will deny that the series of acts which originally
intervened between the sensation and the letting go of the dog were, in the
strictest sense, intellectual and rational operations. Do they cease to be
so when the man ceases to be conscious of them? That depends upon what is
the essence and what the accident of those operations, which, taken
together, constitute ratiocination.
Now ratiocination is resolvable into predication, and predication consists
in marking, in some way, the existence, the co-existence, the succession,
the likeness and unlikeness, of things or their ideas. Whatever does this,
reasons; and if a machine produces the effects of reason, I see no more
ground for denying to it the reasoning power, because it is unconscious,
than I see for refusing to Mr. Babbage's engine the title of a calculating
machine on the same grounds.
Thus it seems to me that a gamekeeper reasons, whether he is conscious or
unconscious, whether his reasoning is carried on by neurosis alone, or
whether it involves more or less psychosis. And if this is true of the
gamekeeper, it is also true of the greyhound. The essential resemblances in
all points of structure and function, so far as they can be studied,
between the nervous system of the man and that of the dog, leave no
reasonable doubt that the processes which go on in the one are just like
those which take place in the other. In the dog, there can be no doubt that
the nervous matter which lies between the retina and the muscles undergoes
a series of changes, precisely analogous to those which, in the man, give
rise to sensation, a train of thought, and volition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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